UPDATE: Nov. 22, 2023, 11:10 a.m. EST The new Best Buy Drops tab on the Best Buy app gives you a head’s up about upcoming new product drops, limited edition releases, and major discounts on high-profile items ahead of the holidays. This post has been updated to track the products dropping in the coming week.
When it comes to shopping, a scarcity mindset is just as convincing as that one friend who always enables you to buy something you don’t need. It’s why there’s often a timer breathing down your neck from the corner of the screen during a sitewide sale. It’s exactly why Amazon’s invite-only Prime Day deals and Black Friday deals popped off, and why Walmart lets Walmart+ members get their hands on new groups of deals hours before the general public can.
And it’s probably why Best Buy conveniently announced Best Buy Drops just ahead of full-blown holiday shopping season. And after two-ish months of Drops of seeing what Drops has to offer, we can confirm it’s genius.
Best Buy Drops is a shopping hack dedicated to giving shoppers a heads-up about upcoming high-profile items and deals in categories like gaming, cheap TVs, popular toys, high-profile hair tools, and more dropping at Best Buy in the next week. As long as you have the Best Buy mobile app, you can preview what’s coming on what day so that you’re ready to click “add to cart” when the item or deal goes live.
If a Drop is currently live while you’re on the app, a status bar showing the percentage of inventory that has been claimed can give an idea of how fast you need to act. Once inventory for a certain Drop is gone, it’s gone.
Drops can include a huge price slash on a popular item or availability of product that wasn’t up for grabs before.
Credit: Screenshot / Mashable
The Drops tab also keeps a list of past Drops, which have included a limited-edition PlayStation 5 Marvel’s Spider-Man bundle, Pokémon Squishmallows, a super cheap 50-inch TV, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2. Even if you missed these, you at least have an idea of what similar items could pop up in the coming weeks. To look ahead, check the upcoming tab.
For extra cushion, you can opt-in to Drop Alerts for an extra reminder right before the drop of a product you care about goes live. Joining My Best Buy Plus or My Best Buy Total will unlock even better discounts on Drops than what the general public is getting.
What’s dropping at Best Buy Nov. 28 through Nov. 30
Best Buy is only revealing the names of the upcoming products — not their actual Drop prices — in the Drop preview tab, so any prices listed below are the current price of the said product as it is on Best Buy’s site pre-Drop. Drops go live around 11 a.m. ET on the specified day (usually a string of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in any given week), and inventory is typically fully claimed by 5 p.m. that day.
Dropping: Nov. 28
The internet’s favorite Dyson Airwrap dupe is about to look like even more of a steal when it gets the Drop treatment. Even at its Cyber Week pricing of $479.99, the latest Airwrap still costs almost $200 more than the Shark FlexStyle at full price. With the FlexStyle’s $199.99 sale price at Best Buy, you could buy two FlexStyles for the price of one on-sale AirWrap.
This discount is even more major when you consider that the FlexStyle didn’t really get the big Black Friday treatment everyone was expecting. A fleeting Amazon coupon dropped it to $239.99 the week before, and then during Black Friday Shark didn’t do much more than give away free air purifiers with the purchase of a full-price FlexStyle. Best Buy’s Drop pricing of $199.99 might just cement the FlexStyle as the hot air styler to snag this holiday season.
The featured model comes with four attachments including two different curler sizes, a round brush, a flat brush, and a concentrator.
Dropping: Nov. 29
Here’s a gift idea for anyone whose wallet situation is so chaotic that it makes you uneasy to watch them dig around in it. The Ridge Wallet is an RFID-blocking aluminum wallet with an elastic expander that organizes cards that can be flipped out as if there’s a hinge on one end. The minimalist design can hold up to 12 cards and also features a money clip.
Dropping: Nov. 30
An Apple product being featured as a Drop feels major, especially when it likely means that Best Buy’s price tag on the cheapest iPad (just called “iPad”) is going to beat Amazon’s best price of $229.99 from Black Friday. This is the WiFi-only 9th generation of the iPad, outfitted with an A13 chip and 10.2-inch Retina display that’s enough for average tablet tasks like social media perusing, shopping, email checking, and falling down YouTube rabbit holes.
